03:32 am - Beltaine Musings + Cat Pic & Obama VideoThis weekend was a bit somber because I spent some of it helping a dear friend who just found out his cat has heart trouble and is likely to die soon. However, it was also a good weekend in cat news. Last week, we took Buddy in for his latest tests. His thyroid levels are identical to (and in fact a fraction less than) what they were in February, meaning his thyroid problems are not getting worse, and that's the big thing we needed the radioiodine treatment back in October and Novembers to deal with. He's stable, he's on half the thyroid medicine he was on before, and best of all, he's gained more than 2.5 pounds. He was down to a hair under 7 pounds at his lowest, and with both feeding him wet cat food through a syringe and giving him his favorite dry cat food, he is now at 9.5 pounds. He was at 11 pounds a year ago, but he's also still gaining weight :) Buddy is 17, but he seems in excellent shape despite his advanced age and is now climbing around more than he has in several years, and getting back on top of our cat furniture.

In other news, seeing people celebrating the death of anyone bothers me, but in this case not quite as much as it would in almost all other cases. Perhaps the best I can say is that the world needs a whole lot less hate on all sides. I don't in any way celebrate the death of Osama Bin Laden, but I also do not miss his presence in the world.

I was also very pleased to see this video of President Obama at the yearly White House Correspondents Dinner. Using humor, he gets to say a number of exceedingly true things the press would nonetheless attack him for saying more seriously. He's far from the best president we've had, but he may be the best one we could get in this truly insane era. I can barely imagine how hard being President must be for him. So it goes… Here's the impressively funny video of President Obama

Comments:

As I said in a comment to another friend, Bin Laden was a rotten guy, but he was not as powerful as the media has pumped him up to be, and it also doesn't exactly make America a bunch of big freaking heroes for having gotten rid of one rotten guy and his pitiful army; 9/11 was the military equivalent of a temper tantrum, and he wasn't exactly that big a force for America to have conquered. Nor does it actually bring justice to the 9/11 victims, given that it can't bring them back. But, whatev. For a while, Americans will run around feeling all patriotic and heroic because he died, and then they'll forget it happened.

Yes, but that in no way means that he isn't dead, merely that journalists couldn't get a pic (or maybe just not a recognizable pic) and so faked one. The status of journalistic integrity, especially in the US, is seriously low. If he's actually alive, I'd expect a broadcast from him in a day or so to make the US look like idiots. In the absence of this, he's dead.

Normally, I do not practice hate, because I do not think it serves a practical purpose. But I hated Osama bin Laden... though I did not think of him often, when I did, I wished him dead. The best I could wish on such a person is a realization of their destructiveness and anathema, yet that is not as merciful as wishing them simply dead or insane.